#im mostly going for the idea that while there arent any “watchers” these people are just living their lives

[greedwritesstorys]

conversations in the tundra - dsmp short

tommy didn't remember everything between then and now. one moment the nukes were falling, the next him and jack were standing outside techno's house talking about happiness. he'd lived a whole life between those moments.

maybe there never was any nukes, maybe there isn't anything at all right now. maybe each moment was a dream of its own and he's somewhere else entirely. it didn't really matter. tommy was sure he could spend an eternity worrying about what was reality, but it wouldn't make a difference. the story was over, that much was clear, it had ended some time ago, when phil and techno and niki and ranboo had all left and there was nothing else to be said. no narrative left to weave peoples lives into whatever strange mesh it wanted. he remembered now his friend the honey bee farmer. tubbo, he was still somewhere.

did he have the same thoughts, was he left wondering what choices and actions led to this moment now. maybe. tommy doubted he'd get the chance to ask.

because for this moment, all of a sudden, he realised he felt like he was connected to it all still. like there was a story being told somewhere. like history was watching again, reminding him that things aren't forgotten because they fade a little. time might be relentless in turning everything to dust, in ensuring that "this too shall pass." but times power is equalled by our memory. nothing can truly die if it is remembered.

"are you happy? i guess that's all i'd care to know"

the answer came quickly, he'd been thinking about this too, for so long.

"getting there."

it was cold out, i mean, it was a tundra, of course it was cold out, why would anyone chose to live here of all places. maybe jack was on to something, a rundown casino might still be warmer than this.

did he miss the people they were back then? was it just that back then, back with the story was strong and the world alive, that he too felt alive, connected to everything. and if that was the case, was the only way to keep feeling like that to keep going, to keep that mess of fighting and betraying and anger rolling just so that the story didn't end. and if that were the case... was the only ending one where everything blew up...

tommy hated that idea, why should he have to die a hero or become a villain. why shouldn't this be as real as everything else was.

jack had left now, back to gambling or whatever, he seemed alright.

tommy felt that feeling fading again, the eyes were off him, no one watching. things were peaceful out here. the world was quiet here once more. he turned back to whatever it was he was doing before jack appeared. he didn't have all the answers to his questions, maybe he would find them in time, maybe he wouldn't.

somewhere far out in the wilderness, kingdoms were being toppled.

somewhere far into the future, lost citys were being discovered.

somewhere far from anything he could understand, green gods and winged men waited in a void.

all these stories are happening at once, because there are people out there still living them now.

"yeah" tommy thought to himself.

"i'm going to get there soon."

[stitchthesewords]

I hope you know this new au is never leaving my head. Seriously. It's rotating so hard it may explode

-🍂

YOU AND ME BOTH SO,,,LET ME,,,GIVE YOU MORE THOUGHTS TO ROTATE

HotGuy: Skilled with Archery, I do think of him similarly to hawkeye though im honestly not familiar with him because the only MCU thing I've even seen beside the spiderman movies is The Avengers. So. Take that as you will. He has a bow and crossbow, along with gadgets that function similarly - a lot of wacky arrows like nets and smoke bombs and suction cups. He's got a small limp from an old battle that they counteract with his boots. Of the duo, he is definitely meant to be mostly Offensive when they fight, relying on CuteGuy for anything that isn't 'shoot the enemy in the face'

CuteGuy: Uses a gun, though the Lab SAYS its a pellet gun and not a 'real' one [a lie.] Mostly as a backup weapon, however, as his main area is support. His gun is, similar to HotGuy's arrows, equipped with the ability to take multiple kinds of bullets. He has to be very careful to be sure that he's shooting the right one - think sort of like how the supports in Overwatch work, since my main is Baptiste, so he has like - healing 'bullets' which obviously arent really bullets, and then real bullets that actually do damage. I think there are also things like sleeping bullets, maybe electrified ones. He carries most of the utilitarian gadgets for their team too.

The Evoker: Think somewhat similar to Iron Man. It's a full body mech suit that Scar uses to walk around. It can fly, give him basic data about an area or someone, has weapons built into it, and later on Mumbo retrofits it with its own abilities like boosts to Scar's strength and speed. There's a voice synthisizer to hide Scar's identity, because he doesn't know WHY CuteGuy would stay with the Lab, but he can't trust him with any knowledge.

The Watcher - Blind. Literally. His powers partially compensate for this, but it's not like actually seeing with his eyes. And the transformation process to become the Watcher was INCREDIBLY painful for Grian, waking up in total darkness [which, to clarify, the blindness Grian experiences as the Watcher is not ACTUAL blindness. It is instead like they are blocking out his sight while still giving him...sight? I suppose? Like holding something in front of his vision, but they can take the blockage away at any time because he'll be more powerful. Like training with weights and then taking them off for a fight.] The Watcher's abilities let him 'see' things are outlines, or something simply sense they they are there. It's like having 360 vision but having no instincts of how to read it. He also can get flashes of the future, who allows him to do things like avoid bumping into people, or guess when Mumbo was trying to trap him with a net. But these future flashes are only correct some of the time, not all the time - the future can change in an instant after all. And it is NOT like having visions that go far into the future, more like a premonition of something happening seconds away. This allows Grian to live his life as though he could see but means that during his downtime, when he can't use his powers due to motion sickness and other illness, he has no idea how to navigate the world at all. He's been trying to get better, but the Lab doesn't like him NOT using his power, so it's incredibly difficult when he's being watched himself. Grian relies on his old methods of fighting, using a new gun and also, a sword, something he trained with before he became HotGuy's sidekick.

and as a bonus I wanna talk about the NHO guys bc,,,,, I love them.

Bdubs aka...I'm not really sure yet. We'll get there - He only had a brief stint as a powerless hero, most of his work was very lowkey in a team. He takes the experiment for powers because he wants to monetary boost - He's given plant powers [kind of like poison ivy?? I think] and they seal him in a sensory deprivation tank to get his powers to work. Did the Lab actually know that would work and wasn't just a form of torture? You decide!

Etho - not a Hero. He does, however, work for the lab as a spy. And hitman. Semi-military. Whatever they need him for really. He has his own redstone knowledge that he brought with him so he often messes with his own gadgets and helps their engineering teams out when he doesn't have a job. The Lab faked his death, because they needed him to be able to do his job without being tracked.

Beef aka The Butcher - He does not have powers, he instead in a melee-based fighting hero from around the same time that HotGuy and CuteGuy were active. He has a bulky full face mask he wears with a voice modulator built into it to conceal his identity.

Doc - Not a Hero. More like a hostage of the Lab - passive mob hybrids naturally exist in the world [Avians, sheep, etc.] but not neutral or aggressive mobs. Doc was part of the first round of experiments that were trying to make superpowers - and their first attempt was to fuse people with aggressive mobs [This is also where Tango comes from]. This plan failed - most people died, and those like Doc [and Tango] that didn't die were not what the lab needed. However, the evidence of what they'd done was far too obvious, and so the surviving hybrids are kept locked up deep within the Lab. Doc is an engineer who designed or improved most of the Lab's gadgets, which is how the NHO met - Doc is the one who makes all their gadgets.

[agentbarton12]

Old People Teenager Watchers

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6

~

the advice - 3

Tony trusted Peter.

He doubted he’d say it to his face, but he hoped that Peter knew it anyway. He trusted that, when in a situation, Peter would make the right decision. Okay, more like hoped, but whatever.

The point is, when Peter came to him saying that he was ready to reveal Spider-Man to world, Tony thought he was being a complete idiot.

Why would he want to give up anonymity? What could possibly make him think this would be a good idea? Hormones, was the first answer that came to Tony's mind. Peter wanted to impress someone and he thought the best way to do that would be to reveal his identity. Then Tony got to thinking about all the people Peter could want to impress, but the only one he could think of was MJ (that’s right. She’s MJ now. Take that Steve) and that didn’t make sense — she already knew about his not-so-secret identity. Which meant that there had to be another girl.

Ugh.

Just the thought of Peter liking anyone except Michelle made Tony sick.

He tried very subtly to figure out why Peter wanted to do this (“Why, Peter? This could ruin your life. Don’t go public, Pete. Don’t do it. You’ll give me a heart attack. Ah, there it is. Do your super spider ears hear that? That’s sound of me dying. You really wanna kill me?”), but for some reason, it never worked.

He had been so lost and confused for a full hour, and that was the longest he had gone not understanding something, when MJ sent him a picture.

Emmjaaay

[image attached] chill out, dude. they were gonna figure it out anyway. besides, he feels like its “time” or whatever now

The picture was of Peter in his Spidey suit sitting on a roof without his mask on. It was a grainy picture, but if you knew who Peter was, you would be able to tell it was him. Honestly, of all the reasons to reveal your identity, it’s because someone took a photo of him. Not because it would benefit humanity or some noble thing Steve would talk about, but because of a picture.

Tony was tech genius, for crying out loud! He could make this picture disappear and Peter wouldn’t have to do something rash, like reveal himself.

TonyMan

How do you feel about this?

Emmjaaay

eh, im kinda, dare I say it, proud of him. that hurt so much to type.

TonyMan

Ha. But really, you think he’s ready? This is a big step up.

Emmjaaay

arent you, the same guy who tried offering him a spot on the avengers team when he was what, 12? he turned you down because he didn’t feel ready, now like three years later he does. just sit back and trust he’s making the right decision even if you feel he isnt. its the only reason I have put up with his self-sacrificing tendencies.

TonyMan

Do me a favour and activate the auto-correct on your phone.

TonyMan

Like, seriously. Please.

They held a press conference the next day. No, Tony was not announcing him as an Avenger, just the identity thing, which still wasn’t sitting well with him.

Really, he thought Peter was being irrational, and he even told him as much, which resulted in Peter saying that he wasn’t a kid anymore and was allowed to make his own decisions, no matter how rash Tony thought them to be.

As it turns out, it went pretty well. Peter even had an original speech planned that was so clearly written by MJ, Tony thought it was her up on the podium. He answered questions quickly and curtly, going into detail where necessary, and where not, giving vague answers. He was so clearly taught by Pepper, that Tony thought it was her up on the podium.

The press ate it up and even got Peter to demonstrate some of his powers. Of course, the kid decided that climbing the walls was a good idea and when he saw MJ somewhere at the back, even though she said she didn’t want to go, he lost his grip and fell on his face. MJ laughed the loudest.

So, maybe Tony should’ve trusted Peter’s decision, because it seemed to have worked out okay. The world knew he was Spider-Man, but didn’t know where he lived, which was great for May and his friends. The press knows his school and Tony knows that the first couple of weeks back are going to be hectic.

Tony apologised to Peter for not trusting him and promised to trust him so much, he might as well be his Magic 8 Ball. He explained that he was worried he was doing it because he felt forced, but Peter explained that he has been thinking about it for a while, and that picture just gave him the push he needed to go through with it.

Like Tony expected, Peter was swarmed at school, and as a result, Ned and MJ were too. MJ was undoubtedly the best at handling press, because she was never interesting enough for them to get any information. She hardly spoke when she saw any camera, always burying her face in a book, and making sure Peter and Ned don’t do anything dumb, like exist too much.

All in all, nothing bad had happened since then. Sure, a couple villains tried to use Peter’s open identity as a means to get to him. One guy thought that kidnapping Ned and MJ would be a good idea, but he didn’t count on them practically being the adopted children of the Avengers and was in for a surprise when not one, not two, but all the Avengers showed up to his basement hideout thing.

No one’s tried anything again.

Sadly, like Tony expected, there was — ahem — another girl. Name was Gwen Stacy or something dumb like that. Pepper says the only reason Tony doesn’t like the girl is because he wants Peter to end up with MJ.

And Tony isn’t denying it.

He’s discovered that Gwen and Peter aren’t dating, which means there is still a bit of wingman-ing that can be done. For Peter and MJ. Not Gwen. Gwen could go ahead and be hit by a bus for all Tony cared. In fact, he should make that make that happen…

The only thing that sucked more than Gwen and Peter getting chummy together, was that the only one who was determinedly unbothered by it, was the one it concerned the most.

MJ responded to their relationship (or lack thereof, if Tony had anything to do with it) with a slight furrow in eyebrows and the tilt of her head, as if figuring out if she was okay with this (she wasn’t) or if she had any say in it. But, when she saw Peter’s dumb grin, she gave them the slightest of smiles and told them not to be gross. Sometimes, Tony hated how diplomatic MJ could be.

At the end of the day, Tony had a semblance of hope that they could end up together. This hope dropped marginally when he walked into the kitchen and found MJ's face in his freezer.

“You got any ice cream?”

Tony nearly got a heart attack. “What? — How do you keep getting up here?”

“Like, I know you have ice cream, but you got any good ice cream?” she went on, ignoring his question.

Tony crossed his arms. “I have good ice cream. I don’t know if you noticed, but all that dairy goodness in there is ice cream Ben & Jerry's named after me. Stark's Raving Hazelnuts.”

MJ slowly shut the freezer door. “I just remembered I’m lactose intolerant.”

The billionaire rolled his eyes. “Ha-ha. It’s good, though.”

“I hear it’s chalky.”

“From where?”

“Around.”

When Tony realised that she wasn’t going to elaborate, he changed the subject. “What are you doing here? Thought you and the dudes got together every Wednesday to celebrate the fact Friday’s around the corner?”

MJ shrugged as she continued looking through his fridge and various cupboards. “Yeah, well I guess Idiot Number 1 realised that Peter Parker is just as popular as Spider-Man. He’s gone to a party with Ned.”

“A party? On a Wednesday?”

“Could be. Could be a fundraiser, could be a charity event, could even be a wedding — all I know is that Peter is a very high demand right now.” She had given up one finding anything and stood on one end of the counter and pulled out her phone.

“Why didn’t you join them?”

Another shrug. “I’d like to hang out with my friend when he’s my friend. I understand that in public, he’ll either be Spider-Man or Peter Parker: Teen Avenger — ”

“He’s not an Avenger.”

“ — But, I prefer Peter Parker: Dork Extraordinaire.”

Tony hummed in thought. “Have you told him this?”

“Partly.” She looked up from her phone. “I’m getting ice cream, you want anything?”

“Thought you were lactose intolerant?”

“Fine I’m bad-ice-cream-flavours intolerant,” she deadpanned. “Now, you want anything?”

“Cheeseburger and fries. Coke, too.”

MJ hummed. “Cool. Cash or card?”

“I knew it,” Tony sighed. “Cash.”

MJ visibly deflated. “Dammit. I was hoping to get your pin number.

“Not happening.”

She shrugged and pocketed her phone after she made the order. Tony followed her to couch were they sat staring at a blank T.V. screen. He watched as she pulled her feet underneath her and absentmindedly started tugging on her hair — even though it was in a bun. It seemed to be a habit.

“So,” Tony started, “when are you planning on telling Peter you like him?”

“Don’t know if I want to.” MJ sighed.

Tony was taken aback. Mostly, because he wasn’t expecting her to answer, but also because she wasn’t denying it. When Tony said as much, she rolled her eyes and said, “I know how to acknowledge things, Tony.”

He raised his arms in defense. “Never said you didn’t, just that I’m surprised you did.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not gonna make a difference, is it? He’s fawning over Gwen and vice versa — it’s kinda cute, honestly. Like, I catch him staring at her while she’s studying, or working on an equation and it’s like he’s just in that moment. Like it’s just Gwen working and nothing else.”

“Oh, so it’s exactly how he acts around you?”

Her nose scrunched up as she looked at him. “He does that?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. There’s a betting pool we have to see who’s gonna break first and ask the other out. I bet one of my suits that it’ll be you, so don’t disappoint me,” he said jokingly, trying to subtlety instill the prospect into her mind. It didn’t work because she just continued to stare at the screen.

FRIDAY then alerted him that their food had arrived, and Tony asked her to have it brought up. He got up from his spot and moved to the elevator to collect their order, when they dinged open and Scott walked out holding the bag of food.

“’Sup, Stark — ooh, is MJ here? Why’s MJ here? It’s Wednesday, right?” Tony held up a hand to silence him and opened his palm.

“Food first, questions later,” he said, motioning with his fingers to indicate that Scott should hand over the bag. Scott ignored him and walked away to sit next to MJ on the couch.

“Hey, Scott,” she greeted, with a two finger salute.

“Hey. Whatchu doin’ here?”

She shrugged before holding her hand out and Scott more than happily handed over her ice cream. He took out Tony's cheeseburger and bit into it. That was when Tony rushed to intervene with his teammates mouth and his food. Scott merely held the food at arms length away from the billionaire and told him to get his own food. Tony huffed in annoyance about how that was his own food. Scott ignored him and proceeded to take a huge gulp of the drink. MJ just watched in amusement, a smirk playing on her lips behind her ice cream spoon. “See, Tones. Why would I want to hang around a bunch of fame-hungry and genetically modified teenagers when I have front seat tickets to the lamest argument ever?” she asked while Tony and Scott where still bickering over the food.

Tony frowned. “Ned’s not fame-hungry or genetically modified.”

She replied shrugging, “Ned’s special.”

“That he is,” Scott agreed. “Where are they, anyway?” he asked referring to Peter and Ned, shoving a handful of fries in his mouth. Tony hit him upside his head so hard, he sputtered out half-chewed potatoes on the couch. He eyed Tony without a single regret. “I hope you know that you’ll have to clean that up. Because we both know who it’s gonna bother more,” he said in a challenging tone.

Tony stared at him defiantly and MJ mentally counted to fifteen before Tony snapped and went to the kitchen for napkins. Scott celebrated childishly when Tony moved to wipe away the food. He did not account for Tony dropping the napkin in his lap with a devilish grin.

“I hate you,” Scott said. He got up and threw it away. When he came back, he found Tony finishing off the burger while slurping down the Coke. He gave Scott a smirk and Scott responded by flipping him off.

“Totally better than some movie premiere,” MJ said grinning.

“Who’s at a movie premiere?” Scott asked sitting back down on the couch.

MJ responded, shrugging, “Peter and Ned. Maybe. I actually don’t remember what event it was.”

Scott hummed, continuing to stuff his face with chips. Tony looked at Scott evilly then grinned and said in a sing-song voice, “MJ misses Peter.” MJ rolled her eyes, while Scott looked like he wanted to smile, but was fighting against it.

“How do you know?” he asked eventually.

“She told me,” Tony answered in the same voice that got him in the head with a cushion. “She also told me that she likes him.

Scott couldn’t help it and smiled the biggest grin he could muster. He practically squealed with delight and clapped his hands excitedly, then suddenly, he stopped. “Wait. How come you told Tony and not me?”

“He asked first.”

“Fair.” After a moment of silence, Scott asked curiously, “When are you gonna tell him?”

“Why does everyone feel like I need to do something?” she mumbled. “And besides, he’s practically almost in love with Gwen, so I’m not going to bother myself.”

Scott sighed. “There is no way he can be ‘practically almost in love’ with anyone when you’re a person that exists. And, trust me, if there is one thing you can do with these things, it’s try. I mean, look at me,” he gestured to himself wildly. “Hope thought I was just an idiot who stole her father’s suit, but now — ” MJ snorted “ — What?” Scott asked frowning.

“Nothing. It’s just funny how you say thought like she used to think that and she doesn’t now.”

Scott scowled while Tony gave her a fist bump. “Anyway, point is: I thought I had literally no chance with her, but turns out she liked me too! Or learned to like me too. Or is learning to like me too...I need to make a call...” Scott stood up slowly and walked out of the room silently.

Tony looked around and breathed out. “Wow, MJ, you made him question his relationship.”

She shrugged. “Oops.”

A beat. “That was good advice though. You should try.”

She didn’t answer. After a moment she said, “Yeah, well maybe Gwen deserves a shot too.”

Sometimes, Tony hated how diplomatic MJ could be.